The Five Worst Days
by Gandalf3213
Summary: The five worst days in the year that Harvey and Mike are getting to know each other. Five awful incidents that go a long way to forging a life-long friendship. 5: Someone with a vendetta against Harvey decides to take his frustrations out on Harvey's brother and his associate. Mike and Josh are kidnapped, and Harvey is forced to choose which of them will live.
1. The Fifth Worst Day

_"Only time I've ever seen you wear lavender is when your brother was in the hospital." **Donna**_

.***.

The fifth-worst day that year started out nice enough. Harvey got up, stumbled over to the treadmill and ran three miles while watching the Sports Update. He put on the coffee while he took a shower. Then dressed, poured the coffee, got in car, got to work by 9 am on the dot. He was in the car when he got the call from his brother._  
_

"Hey big bro," Harvey smiled at the sound of Joshua's voice. He'd practically raised the kid and now only saw him when both of their hectic schedules coincided, which wasn't often enough. So he contented himself with phone calls most of the time, and tried to pretend he wasn't damn proud every time he saw his little brother's comics in all the daily papers. "I'm in your neck of the woods today. You got time for lunch?"

"Only if you take me to the Phoenix."

"Still craving crappy diner food?" Josh laughed, "Shouldn't big-shot lawyers have a more refined palate?"

"Shouldn't artists be eating at snobby, hipster restaurants?"

"I'm impressed you know the word hipster, Harv."

"You kidding? They had to invent a new term for me and that's the best they could come up with." Harvey liked making his little brother laugh, because he still laughed like he was ten years old and didn't have a care in the world. "I'll see you at one. Try to fight the instinct to be late."

"But Harv, I have to find some way to keep giving you grey hairs." Harvey shook his head and hung up the phone. He smiled. He didn't yet know that this would be the fifth-worst day of the year.

.***.

Across town, Mike was leaving the nursing home later than he would have liked. His suit was rumpled, and Harvey was going to make fun of him for five minutes before giving him one of the eight spares he kept on hand at all time. He would ask what Mike had been doing that made him wear the same suit two days in a row, and Mike would think that maybe Harvey had grown a soul and would begin to answer before remembering that Harvey Specter was incapable of compassion.

"We'll call you if her condition changes," one of the nurses, young and pretty with a bit of a crush on the lawyer who still visited his grandmother every week, told him on his way out. He flashed her a tight smile. This is what he'd known was coming but refused to think about: his grandmother was getting old. She'd fallen yesterday and hit her head against a table. Mike had sat with her all night. She'd called him his father's name. He'd pretended not to notice.

Mike didn't know that this would be the fifth-worst day of his year, but at least he had an inkling that it wouldn't be a great day. He just didn't know how much worse things could get.

He liked the action of riding his bike to work. He liked dodging through New York City traffic, zipping by executives in their limos and people in taxis and commuters and soccer moms. He liked to think that one day he'd pass by Harvey on his way to work and prove once and for all that his mode of transportation wasn't useless.

He also liked riding his bike because it gave his mind room to wander, make connections without him having to push for them. Today, he was starting to slowly get a revelation about the sports agency the firm was representing...something about salaries and statistics, sacks and Salmason...everything was just beginning to come together. He didn't want to push the idea too much, or else he'd put off that Eureka moment. Look too hard at one of those pictures of the swirly lines and you'll never see Shakespeare's face hidden in the squiggles.

What he didn't like about riding a bike was the lack of padding, because when Mike was caught up in those Eureka moments he had a tendency to not notice things like SUVs barrelling towards him. Not until the last minute anyway.

The car screeched and Mike swerved, but it wasn't enough to avoid the collision entirely. Mike went flying, tumbling through the air in a way that would have made any Olympic gymnast jealous, though the Olympic gymnasts would probably have a more graceful landing than smacking hard into the concrete.

He got up, dazed, his revelation completely gone in the wake of the pain that flared in his chest and his left arm. A woman got out of the SUV, and as Mike blinked up at the car he could see three, four, five heads poking out various windows. Great, he'd just been hit by a car pool.

"Ohmygod are you okay?" Mike nodded, looking around for his bike and _thank God_ finding it mostly undamaged. "Do you want me to call someone? Do you need an ambulance?"

"I'm fine," Mike gasped, thinking _shit, I'm gonna be so late. _"I gotta go. Hope you're all right." He took off unsteadily, wishing he'd had that Eureka moment already. All the facts of the case seemed to have disappeared only to be replaced by throbbing everywhere.

He managed to get to the office only ten minutes late. Most of those minutes were spent fumbling with the lock on his bike. His left arm was no longer cooperating with the signals sent to it by his brain and it took a deal of contortoinism to chain the bike to a pole.

He was fully expecting a dressing-down when he showed up late at Harvey's door with a very rumpled day-old suit and no answers as to how to proceed with their case. "Er...Harvey..."

"You're going to have to start keeping your own stock of suits, kid. Can't have you wearing one of mine every day." Mike blinked, surprised at Harvey's light mood. As the older man crossed his office and plucked a suit out of a hidden closet, Mike did his best to wipe the blood off of his scraped palms. If Harvey was going to play nice, Mike was going to do his best to put the morning behind him.

"Go wash up, come back to me when you don't look like you were just frozen in a block of carbonite." Mike took the suit, looking at the purple tie laying on top and frowning.

"What, don't like purple?"

"It's lavender," Mike said, ready to unstick his tongue and try to forget his sore body. "And my great-aunt used to whack me with a cane that was painted that exact shade of lavender."

"That nice grandma of yours ever tell you that beggers can's be choosers?" But Harvey was already undoing his navy tie, "I'm not doing this for you, kid," Harvey said in response to Mike's incredulous expression, "I'm meeting my brother for lunch today and am going to stick him with the lavender tie. He'll get a kick out of it."

"How is Josh?" Mike asked, giving a half-glance to the framed picture the artist had given Harvey the only time Mike and Joshua had met. It was Mike's favorite thing in Harvey's office - a simple sketch of Harvey and Mike together. "I saw he won the Reuben award for _The Cuckoo's Nest. _Pass on my congrats, will you?"

Harvey felt a swell of pride at the mention of the award. He remembered being woken up at four am by his cell phone. When he glanced at the caller ID, he was sure it was bad news. Why else would you call someone at four am? He was not expecting Josh's voice in his ear, yelling about a prize won by people like Charles Schultz and Jerry Scott. But he liked to pretend that he had no heart, so he just shook his head and propelled Mike out of the office, "Be back here in ten with a solution to the Bandicoot case." He never noticed Mike limping slightly, or the fact that he never moved his left arm, not once. He was already retreating back into his office, using the window's reflection to tie the lavender tie.

.***.

So how did a kind of good and kind of sucky day turn into both Harvey Specter's and Mike Ross's fifth-worst day of that year? With lunch, and two trips to the hospital.

Mike split for lunch at twelve forty-five, already hopping on his bike to head down to the nursing home because even though pretty nurses would promise to call him all the time, pretty nurses were often swayed by nice old ladies who didn't want to bother their grandson. At twelve fifty-four, Mike had fumbled with his lock enough to get it off the bike and was thinking that maybe he could get a pretty nurse to check out his arm. He suspected bad bruising, maybe some muscle damage, take two pills and call me in the morning.

At twelve fifty-seven, Harvey Specter walked into the Phoenix diner and took a seat in a booth that he and Josh had shared for ten years, since they'd moved from Boston to New York. Joshua wasn't there yet.

At twelve fifty-nine, Josh Specter was crossing the street a block up from the diner when an SUV with five children in it came down the road. The woman driving was named Peggy McClaran, and she was an au pair. She was also texting, despite the fact that she'd been texting that morning when she ran into a guy on a bike.

And who ever said that lightning couldn't strike the same place twice? At twelve fifty-nine, Mike Ross took a shortcut down the same street that the Phoenix Diner was on. He was just remembering the revelation that had come to him that morning, the one about salaries and sacks and...if he could just peddle a little harder, zone out, he'd get it. He'd remember.

At one o'clock, almost on the dot, Harvey Specter sighed and glanced at his watch. Josh was late again. Some things never change.

At one o'clock, almost on the dot, Mike Ross defied the odds and got hit by the same SUV twice in one day. This time it was entirely the car's fault - it had drifted into the narrow bike lane and clipped his back tire. The car was going forty-two miles an hour, and swerved as it hit him...swerved right into Joshua Specter, who was on the sidewalk rifling through his papers, trying to find the newest _Cuckoo's Nest_ he'd drafted.

Josh looked up just in time to see an SUV aiming for his chest. Then he was thrown over the hood of the car, and the world went dark.

.***.

Harvey left the diner when he heard the sirens stop somewhere nearby because he was a paranoid person. When Josh was growing up and Harvey was his guardian, he would envision house fires and car accidents, kidnappings and terrorist attacks if his little brother was even ten minutes late for anything. So when there was a commotion near to where the two brothers had planned to meet, Harvey's pulse raced and he slid out of the booth as nonchalantly as possible. After all, it had always been him overreacting in the past. Why should now be any different?

The first thing he saw was the very young woman with five kids, not one of which was her own, giving a statement to the police. She was crying. Harvey hated it when people cried. It made him hot and uncomfortable. The next thing he noticed was an ambulance loading a man with a mop of hair just like his. "Oh my God," he whispered to himself even as he broke into a run. "Hey!" He called the the EMTs about to close the doors. "Hey, that's my brother!"

"Harvey?"

Harvey spun around and took in the other man on a different stretcher. "Mike?" He could hear his pulse in his ears. The world felt like it was spinning. Josh and Mike involved in the same accident? Every nightmare he'd ever had was coming true.

(except...except this was only the fifth worst day of the year, so obviously everyone lived. there was The Worst Day. when mike and josh were both hurt again, and harvey couldn't do anything to stop it. but there's a pattern to this story. something about empathy. something about a tin man admitting to a heart.)

"Harvey, what happened?" Mike sounded so lost, and Harvey couldn't get past the blood dripping down his face, but he looked intact. He was well enough to talk at least. That had to be a good thing.

"Sir, another ambulance is coming. We need to leave with your brother now. Are you staying here or coming with us?" Harvey looked down at Mike and felt like the EMT was asking him to chose between his two little brothers.

"I'll be at the hospital, Mike." Harvey knelt down and pulled off the lavender tie. He thrust it into Mike's hand and curled the younger man's fingers around it.

"Thought you were giving this to your brother." Mike said quietly. It was getting harder to breathe, harder to keep his eyes open.

"I am," Harvey patted Mike's hand, "Don't die on me, kid."

"'Kay Harv." Mike said, using the name only Joshua used as he passed out on the streets of New York. Harvey forced himself to turn away from him to climb into the ambulance next to his little brother.

.***.

"So...is there a particular reason why Mike is clutching that hideous lavender thing to his chest like a teddy bear?" Donna was trying very hard not to burst into tears - not at the sight of the two young men she'd grown to love lying in hospital beds, looking quite the worse for wear. No, it was Harvey's expression as he stood in the doorway, hands stuffed in his pockets - he looked vulnerable, afraid, concerned. And for the life of her, Donna could not think of a moment in the past eight years when her boss had worn an expression like that.

Harvey liked that Donna was pretending things were normal, "I may or may not have given it to him at the scene."

"Well, now he won't let go. Is he going to use this as proof that you care about him?"

"Probably. He uses everything else." Harvey tried to sound like this pissed him off, so why did it come out so fond, so aw-shucks-that's-kind-of-cute?

"Are we just hovering in the doorway?"

"That was the plan."

"The docs say they're going to be fine. Bumps and bruises and -"

"And gashes and Mike's broken collar bone and Josh..." he couldn't even talk about his little brother, "Josh broke his wrist. His _right_ wrist."

"It'll heal."

"What if it doesn't?" And Harvey wasn't just talking about livelihoods and money and awards like the Reuben his brother had just won. He was talking about the real, God-given talent that had gotten the Specter brothers through more than a few rough patches.

"Well, you're already suing everyone involved. Would bodily injury make you feel better?"

"Sometimes I wish I was less Harvey Dent and more Batman," Harvey muttered. He'd become a lawyer so he would be powerful in the face of any 21st-century villain. And now he felt like he could never exact enough revenge.

"Hey," Donna touched his arm, smiled just a bit at him, "It's going to be okay. They're fine. Everyone's present and accounted for."

"I know," Harvey knew this was the important part. Everything could have ended up so much worse. "It's just been a really bad day."

"I'm pretty sure you've used up all your bad karma for a while," Donna said "There's not much worse it can get than having your assistant and your little brother run over by the same car. They weren't even supposed to be in the same place."

"When you say it like that, it sounds like the beginning of a really bad romantic comedy." Across the room, Mike laughed raggedly, waking out of drug-induced sleep to Harvey's annoyed tone. And Josh was moving, looking at his drawing hand with his brow furrowed, trying to find a way out of this one. Harvey pulled up a chair exactly in between the two of them, believing Donna when she said that things couldn't get any worse than this.

(they were wrong.)

**.***.**

**this version of harvey's brother was introduced in our other suits fic "5 times harvey learned something about mike." this fic's going to be similar - it's five days. five of the worst days imaginable that happen between our two lead guys. because something has to explain this automatic trust that exists between them, and trauma goes a long way to forging friendships.**


	2. The Fourth Worst Day

_**Mike:** So are we a team now?  
**Harvey:** I wouldn't move my things into Wayne Manor just yet.  
**Mike:** So, what, are you Batman now?_

.***.

Years later, Harvey would realize that he put the five worst days of that terrible year in order of how hurt Mike Ross was at the end of it.

Okay, so Harvey didn't figure this out himself. Donna pointed it out to him when she was breezing by his dest one day and saw the list idly sketched out on a post-it.

"Is this in any particular order?" Donna asked after they laughed at how (not) funny it was that the year had had so many horrific days.

"Yeah..." Harvey said, glancing at the list over Donna's shoulder. "Five is the...well, I guess the least bad one. One is The Worst Day."

"Huh." Donna said, in that voice that obviously means she had noticed something interesting and Harvey was too dense to figure it out.

So he took the bait. "What?"

"It's just...well, the accident with your brother is number five."

"Josh is in number one, too." Harvey said, trying hard not to dwell on the series of events that had culminated in The Worst Day.

"Yeah, it's just...well, I thought those would be numbers one and two."

"They were barely hurt in the car thing!" Harvey defended. "What about five? Or the Lawrence incident?"

"Woah, Nelly." Donna put two hands up, the universal sign to back the hell off. "No need to get offended."

"Are you offending him, Donna?" Mike asked, walking into the office with a folder under one arm. "You know you're supposed to call me when you do that."

Harvey tried to move the Post-It before Mike could see it, but the wunderkund caught a glimpse. For an eiditic memory, a glimpse was enough.

"Are you ranking my injuries?" Mike said, because he didn't think of them as days at all but events that eld up to more hospital visits.

"Cause I would put that thing before the court thing last."

"Are you kidding me?" Harvey scoffed, "That was way worse than the fire."

"And I can't even think of where that gun thing would go." Mike said, shuddering, "That was terrifying."

"Well, at least we agree on the best and the worst," Harvey said dryly.

"I wouldn't call me and Josh almost dying a 'best.'"

"Donna," Harvey said, grinning before this got too serious, "Which is number four? That's the fourth worst day of this past year?"

Donna got that mulish look she wore when she didn't want to do anything for anyone, then straightened up, "The fire. The worst for me was the fire. I was the last person Mike spoke to before it broke out."

Both men dropped their grins. "Oh yeah," Mike murmured, "I forgot."

"Lucky you." Donna said, brushing by him on her way out.

.***.

The day was already hot, and it was only seven am. Mike stared at his ceiling, not willing to move in this heat. All he really wanted to do was plunge into a cold pool, and he remembered summers as a child, splashing in Trevor's tiny above-ground pool every day. It wasn't much, but for restless, sweltering teens it could have been the ocean.

He smiled, remembering how Trevor used to dunk him under the water, how he, Mike, would dive for the bigger boy's ankles and they'd both end up submerged, laughing. then he remembered Trevor urging him to sell pot and he hoisted himself out of bed.

The shower was mercifully cool, and Mike revelled in the reprieve from the sticky heat of the city, only reluctantly turning off the cool stream. He was not looking forward to the bike ride to work, sure that he would be a hot mess by the time he arrived. He could only hope that Harvey wouldn't send him on errands and he could spend the day enjoying the Pearson-Hardman air conditioning (his apartment, of course, had no AC of any sort.)

But luck never did like Mike Ross, and he had no sooner gotten settled at his desk, trying not to sweat through his suit, than Harvey came up to him, looking pissed. "What are you doing here?"

"Is that some kind of trick question?" Mike muttered, already slinging his bag back over his shoulder. Somehow he surmised that he would be going out again.

"I told you to go downtown and check with the contractor about the Mendelo property!"

Mike groaned, remembering. "I can't ride all the way to Brooklyn, Harvey. I'll melt. I'm actually the Wicked Witch of the West you know."

"That's why grown-ups buy cars. And the witch melted because of water. It wasn't like she was made of wax."

"It's over a hundred degrees! And that condemned factory is going to be a sauna!" He knew he was whining, but god he hated summer.

"You've hit on the reason I'm not going. Why are we still talking about this?" Harvey left Mike staring at the elevator like a condemned man.

The bike ride was unbearable. A hundred degrees in suburbia, where Mike had grown up, was nothing like a hundred degrees in the city, where the sky-scrapers pushed the heat down and the asphalt pushed the heat up, trapping unwitting humans in the middle.

If Mike had been a hot mess arriving to work, he was a diaster by the time he got to the old factory across the bridge. His jacket was draped over his handlebars, and he'd lost his tie somewhere ten blocks back.

"Mike Ross, representing Pearson Hardman." The beefy contractor looked at him incredulously and Mike couldn't blame him. He wasn't anyone's idea of professional right now.

But the contractor showed him the condemned property anyway, the property Harvey's client had sold them without mentioning the ridiculous lapses in fire-safely code. "I can't put guys to work in here. If something catches fire, God forbid, there probably wouldn't even be enough water in the city to put it out." New York was in the grips of the one of the worst droughts on record.

Mike nodded, ignoring the twinge in his stomach at the words. Because that would be his luck, wouldn't it? To be one of those poor bastards caught in a fire in the middle of a drought...

His phone rang as they climbed to the top floor of the building. "Sorry, one second." The foreman nodded, wandering over to a window and looking at the skyline of NYC arrayed in front of them, hazy in the heat.

"What, Donna?"

"Is that how your mother taught you to answer the phone?" Donna demanded. Mike could not care less. He would peel off his skin if he thought it could cool him off. "Harvey wants an update."

"This is the most unsafe building I've ever been in." Mike declared.

Unbeknownst to him, almost as if waiting for him to say it, the contractor experimentally turned on one of the work lights scattered around the room of the old factory, causing a spark five floors below to jump off its wire.

"That's not what Harvey wants to hear." Donna reminded him unnecessarily, and Mike groaned. Below him, an abandoned pile of two-by-fours ignited like the dried wood it was. From there, the condemned place never had a chance.

"Don't I know it," Mike said, rolling his eyes. A wall caught fire, a floor, another wall. The inferno was spreading, and the foreman was still looking disappointedly at the work light, which had turned on for half a second before blowing out. "I'll be there soon." He hung up, turning back to the contractor and trying to smile. He was too hot to smile.

"I know," The other man said sympathetically, "We're nearly done. You know, I'm from Minnesota. Used to say I'd love to experience a real hundred-degree day." He laughed a little and Mike did too, thinking of diving into a pool, wishing for those old summer vacations.

The second floor caught fire, and Mike caught a whiff of it. He glanced out the window and saw black smoke coming from below, hoisted on the wind like pirate sails. "I think the building's on fire." Mike said to the contractor with a calmness he didn't feel. All Mike could think was that his skin already felt like it would soon drip off his body. Even the thought of fire made him wince. Burns and death and even more heat...just what he needed.

.***.

"Donna, didn't you buy that puppy a leash yet?" Harvey glanced at the clock. Nearly two. Mike should have been back long before now.

"He's probably taking it slow. You did send him on a three mile bike ride on the hottest day of the year."

"Kid has money," Harvey said, refusing to acknowledge the twinge of guilt he felt, "He could buy a car." But he was thinking of heat stroke, which he'd experienced first-hand thank to a truly sadistic baseball coach in high school. He got a Gatorade out of his fridge to drop on the puppy's desk.

"Please tell me you didn't resort to arson, Harvey." Jessica crossed the bullpen, glancing at the blue drink Harvey had just deposited on Mike's desk.

"Huh?" Harvey said eloquently.

"The Mendelo property? Just went up in smoke? Do you ever watch the news?" Jessica was teasing him, of course (well, mostly). So she didn't expect him to turn pale, to grip the cubicle he was standing over so hard his knuckles turned white. "Harvey, what -"

But Harvey was already pulling out his cell phone, "I sent Mike to that building this morning." He said, his voice steady but his fingers shaking as he tried to call his associate. "He called Donna and said he was on his way back...he's probably just going slow."

"It's hot out," Jessica said reasonably, mostly to cover her own shock. Shock that a young man she knew might have perished in a fire, sure, but more shock at the fact that the notorious tin man had found his heart, and it might have burned up in the flames. "I'm sure he's-"

"He's not picking up." Harvey said, then rounded on Jessica. "What did that news report say? Anything about-?" But he choked on the word deaths and left the sentence to be interpreted by the very intelligent woman standing across from him.

"I...I don't think so. But it was a short blurb, just highlighting that its so hot fires start from the smallest thing. It was an abandoned factory. No one was supposed to be in there."

"Which means that if Mike was, no one would go in to help him." Harvey was already striding towards the elevator, Jessica running to keep up with him.

Donna hurried up to them, worry smeared across her face, "Harvey! The Mendelo property!"

"I heard. I'm checking it out. Stay here. If he shows up call me and I'll push him out a window." For scaring the Hell out of me. And God, did he hope Mike would show up sweaty and disgruntled. He hoped the kid would step out of the elevator and be attacked by Donna. He hoped Mike would see the news story and laugh a little hysterically and rub the back of his neck and say_ close one, huh Harv?_ And Harvey would swat him and think that no one called him Harv except Josh, ever, but somehow he didn't mind it from Mike.

But luck was never on their side, was it?

Harvey would have walked to Brooklyn if he thought it would get him there faster. There were so many cars on the street that Harvey was impressed Ray could move anywhere - no one wanted to walk in this heat, and so people were springing for taxis.

"Have you tried calling the hospital?" Ray asked, looking at Harvey in the mirror, and Harvey shook his head. He wanted to believe Mike was whole and safe and unhurt. Calling a hospital looking for someone was a last resort option, and Harvey didn't want to believe they were at that point yet.

Of course, he was heading towards the possibility that Mike had just...died. Just burned up in a fire on Harvey's watch. And anything was better than thinking that the kid who'd made a Wizard of Oz reference this morning was a pile of ash in that ruined building. So he flipped open the phone and prayed that Donna would call him right now and put Mike on the phone to tell him everything was fine.

That didn't happen, because luck had a thing against Mike Ross. So instead Harvey used the little device to call Peter Kettering, a man who lived in his building and also happened to be a doctor at one of the biggest hospitals in the city. A hospital close to Brooklyn. The hospital Mike would have been transported to if...

"Hello?" A harassed-sounding voice came over the phone, and Harvey recognized Peter Kettering - who he liked to get drinks with if they got to the apartment building at the same time, two intelligent, high-achieving men talking about life - at once.

"This is Harvey Specter. Sorry to interrupt you at work, Peter. I was wondering if you got any of the people from the fire on Brooklyn?"

A sigh, and Harvey felt his heart clench. "Harvey, I can't disclose any-"

"One of my guys was in that building." Harvey was working hard to keep his voice level. "Just...did you get anyone? Were there any survivors?"

"One was DOA. The other...well, he's in bad shape." Hope bloomed, sudden and uncontrollable, in Harvey's heart. He thanked Kettering and told Ray to go to the hospital. There was nothing left for them in that shell of a building.

.***.

Two days later, Mike was awake and staring at his right arm, which had been badly burned as he tried to haul the contractor out of the building. "I told you, Harvey. I don't want to talk about this."

It was late, and Harvey had gone to the hospital directly after work to check in on his associate who was improving by the hour. No longer did he look like a badly cooked hotdog. He almost resembled a human being. "Well, you need to talk Mike. Jessica wants you to see the company shrink -" Mike blanched and Harvey nodded in agreement. "It's them or me, kid."

"What am I supposed to say? It was a hundred degrees, there was no moisture anywhere in the building and so it went up like a bunch of matchsticks. I barely got to the window before it crawled up the stairs, and the contractor was right behind me. He knew the building. He knew there was a fire escape - I actually used a fire escape to escape a fire, Harvey."

"Revolutionary."

"Don't be an ass." And Mike looked so pathetic that Harvey resolved to not be an ass. He still remembered bursting into the hospital, thinking that there was a fifty-fifty chance Mike was alive, thinking that he'd caused this, all of it, by sending Mike down to an unsafe condemned building. When he'd seen Mike as they wheeled him to surgery he offered the younger man a smile, even though he was out cold, and then collapsed into a chair, shaking. He wouldn't stop shaking until a man came out of surgery and said Mike was out of the woods.

"Anyway," Mike continued, oblivious to Harvey's musings, "The contractor - I should learn his name, he saved my life - he pulled me onto the fire escape just as there was a big fireball. Like in the movies. He kind of covered me with his body, so he got burned pretty bad. All I remember was that it was really hot, but I felt cold. I guess that's the adrenaline."

"I guess. How'd your arm get burnt?"

"Well, the fire was everywhere, and even though we were outside the building the contractor, he was part way inside and his legs were getting burnt bad. He was screaming..." Mike's voice trailed off and he looked at a point just above Harvey's shoulder. Harvey let him muse for a moment before clearing his throat. "Right. So I reached inside and tried to pull his legs over this little ledge, but he was jammed and he kept screaming and he was about three times the size of me. That's when my arm got burnt, I guess. I don't remember."

"Adrenaline."

"Yeah. I got him out to the ledge, Harvey, but then we needed to go down...fire was coming out of the building and I couldn't...I mean, I couldn't look at it. I couldn't think about it. I just had to move. I...I left him behind, Harvey. I felt so tired, and I could barely get myself down. I kept getting burnt. I told myself that I could tell the fire department where he was, and he shouldn't get too hurt, they could rescue him. But I guess I knew that he'd die if I left him there. And I just..."

Harvey was alarmed to see that Mike was on the verge of tears. He didn't do tears. "It's not your fault. Robin's not supposed to be the hero."

"I'd like to have seen Batman do better." Mike said, his words round with tears.

"Batman couldn't even have done any better. You did what you had to do. You got yourself out of there alive."

"And scarred for life." Mike looked morosely at his hand, touched his face where angry red patches spread like a rash, though the doctors assured him that these would fade in time. "Don't forget scarred for life."

"I'm proud of you, Mike." Harvey said, and something in his flipped when he saw how immediate the effect of those words were. Mike straightened up and smiled, and Harvey reminded himself that they had to work on Mike's need for praise...and then just reminded himself to dole it out more often so he could see Mike, despite the burns and the guilt and the heat, smile as if he didn't have a care in the world.

**.***.**

**in response to those who asked...there's five parts to this. five really bad days. thanks for all the great reviews - it's always nice to know there's people out there enjoying reading this as much as we enjoy writing it.**


	3. The Third Worst Day

_**Harvey**: Haven't I told taught you that there is more than one response to someone having a gun to your head? There's not even a gun in here._  
_**Mike:** No, it's not in here. It's out there roaming the halls, and when it sees me, it's going to start shooting._

.***.

Mike was really getting on Harvey's nerves today.

The kid had picked up a late-summer cold and was just...off his game. He'd come in late looking so pale and out of it that Harvey didn't even have the heart to lecture him, just piled papers into his hands and sent him off to his desk, shouting a reminder that they had a court date this afternoon, and could he please try to look human before then?

Mike grunted, collapsing into his chair and just staredat the pile of papers for a second. He was sick in that awful half-assed way that colds usually do. He felt like he wanted to spend the day in bed, popping Nyquil and not moving much. He also felt like he wanted several blankets, and at the thought his skin crawled uncomfortably. He glanced at his arm and tugged down the shirt sleeve, even though it was already mostly covering his burns. All summer he'd been unwilling to wear short sleeves because...God, he looked ugly.

At that thought he just felt worse, and gave a huge, hacking cough. At least it was a chest cold, not a head cold. He hated swimming in snot. He rubbed his chest and opened the first folder, staring down at the five-syllable words uncomprehendingly. Instead of his brain focusing on the task at hand, he was remembering last week when he had stayed late, surrounded by books and folders and papers. It had been hot and he took off his shirt because no one was _there_.

Until Harvey was, until he walked in bearing a pizza and another stack of folders. "Before you say anything," Harvey had insisted, "This isn't because of any care you think I show towards you. It's because I need those briefs by tomorrow and you never order any food for yourself. Which probably explains that body." He nodded at Mike's admittedly undersized physique but Mike didn't notice, he was already struggling back into his shirt, face aflame with embarrassment over his hideous scars.

When his face emerged from the shirt, he saw...something...smeared all over Harvey's face, "God, kid. I saw you in the hospital. It was a little worse than this."

"I just..." Mike didn't know what he was 'just' doing. He just knew that he didn't want anyone looking at him the way Harvey was looking at him now.

"Like it or not you're stuck with those scars kid. For forever. You think you can hide for the rest of your life?"

"I can try." Mike said fiercely, sending a little pang to Harvey's heart. After all, he was the one who'd sent Mike to that unsafe building in the first place. He was the one who sent him to get burned. But he left Mike alone with his pizza, because the truth was he couldn't stand to look at the blotchy red skin. Not because he thought it made Mike ugly, or made him any less of a man. It was because the sight of them made him feel so guilty he felt like punching something. Or screaming. And neither was an action suitable for the best closer in New York City.

Mike was thinking of that night, of how Harvey had taken one look at his scars and thrown the files on the table and just...left. And he was remembering his brain screaming at him for being stupid enough to think that maybe Harvey of all people wouldn't mind.

Harvey jerked him out of his revere at noon, when he came over to find out why his associate wasn't waiting for him downstairs at the car for him. "Did you get that brief done?"

Mike looked down at the paper, where somehow words had miraculously been written on the page. he handed it wordlessly over to his boss, who scanned it for a second, then nodded. "It's have to do. You coming or not?"

"Coming." He stood up and automatically tugged down his shirtsleeves. If Harvey noticed he didn't comment, just jerked his head in the direction of the exit and left without another word, leaving Mike to follow in his wake.

"Why are we meeting at a bank?" Mike asked when they'd finally arrived. He'd spent the drive over in a state of numb delirium, staring out the window and thinking about cough syrup and a hot shower. It was only when they actually stepped foot onto the streets of New York that he realized they were outside the biggest bank in the city.

"Because our client is a banker?" Harvey raised an eyebrow at Mike, waiting for the witty retort. When none was forthcoming, he blamed it on summer sickness and made up his mind about something. "You're not coming up." Harvey said, putting a hand on Mike's chest to stop him from following Harvey up the stairs. The look of confused incredulity on Mike's face made the older man smirk. "Do you really think getting our client a taste of that cold you're nursing is the best idea?"

"I don't have a cold!" Mike protested, then launched into a coughing fit that left him breathless. "Well...if you knew I was sick why'd you drag me down here in the first place?"

"Because that's what you do to associates. You make their lives miserable." Harvey went up the stairs, knowing he'd just given Mike about an hour of reprieve from work. If the kid was smart, he'd find a quiet corner in the large, cool bank and take a nap without having to worry about Louis or the other associates bothering him.

Harvey thought he was actually being the good guy in this scenario. How was he know that the next time he saw Mike, there'd be a gun pointed at his head?

.***.

Mike actually did find a cool bench to sit down on. He loosened his tie and threw himself onto the seat near the teller, looking at the line of people that approached the little counter, looking beyond it at the huge safe. He knew that he'd once seen a Discovery channel program about banks, and somewhere in his mind was the amount of money kept in the average high-end banking establishment, but it was always on days that he was feeling under the weather that he couldn't quite access that information, at least not as fast he would have been able to while well. By the time his brain had extracted the necessary information, he was already thinking about something else and so let the very large number slip away again.

The time passed in that way it does when you're sick, a haze and blur of discomfort, if not outright pain, and suddenly Mike was very glad Harvey had brought him to this cool place with cold marble floors. No one was bothering him and his head nodded once...twice...

He didn't see the large man and small man walk into the bank, or else he would have noticed how they were looking around like they were nervous about who was watching. He didn't see them approach the counter, one of them reaching into a bag to pull out guns. He didn't notice that they were wearing ski masks, or that they were already causing people look at them in that way a deer looks at headlights - alarmed, and unable to do anything about the problem that was heading their way.

No, Mike was dozing because he hadn't slept well since he'd gotten sick (well, since he'd gotten stuck in that fire, really) So he didn't notice the problem until it was right on top of him. Until the men with masks and guns had made it to the counter and demanded money. They decided to use people as human shields, as captives. The shorter one grabbed a very young woman who was probably new in town and probably still in college and was terrified, absolutely terrified. Her screaming made Mike open his eyes a split-second before a beefy arm wrapped around his neck and _pulled_.

Harvey had once told him there was more than one response when you have a gun to your head, but he couldn't think of any other responses, couldn't think at all except _oh my God he has a gun_. Mike stumbled with the man over to the counter and tried to focus, to get his brain to think, but everything was happening so fast...

...The woman, the other captive who couldn't have been older than twenty was screaming, crying, and Mike felt his panic surge with her panic. Her screams were nearly drowned out, though, because the men holding them were shouting, waving their guns around. "Get on the floor!" "Get down or we'll shoot!" "Give us the money or they die!" And Mike recognized vaguely that the _they_ included _him. _That's when he decided he needed to get out of this situation.

For a split second, Mike winged a prayer of thanks up to whoever wanted to listen. Thanks that Harvey wasn't in this room, int his situation. Thanks that Harvey was safely tucked in a room upstairs, and he had more brains then to come into a firefight. Because there were already sirens to be heard outside the building. The cavalry had arrived, and this wasn't going to end well.

_Haven't I taught you there is more than one response to someone having a gun to your head? _Why did that voice sound like Harvey? Why was Harvey the one he was thinking about when he had a gun to his head? Questions for a later date...

He could struggle. He could elbow the man in the kidneys, whirl, and try to knock the gun out of his hand like they do on TV. He could talk to them, plead for his life or offer some sage advice about not ruining everyone's lives. He could just give up and let himself die.

None of the options sounded particularly promising, and he didn't have time to dwell on it now. A flurry of motion was happening all around him but all he could focus on was the grand staircase Harvey was standing on top of.

Like a camera zooming in, Mike could suddenly see every detail of Harvey's face as he surveyed the chaos below. Incredulity, surprise, his eyes darting around trying to find something, trying to find Mike. And then he did find him, and their eyes met, and...Mike had never seen Harvey panicked before. Not like this. Over jobs and other people's money, over cases and winning and track records. But when lives were on the line...when a gun was pointed at his associate's head Harvey froze, his face a mask of pain and concern so palpable Mike could sense it across the room. He tried to shake his head a little, a warning to not come down, to not to anything stupid.

That minute shake of the head seemed to remind Mike's captor that he had a captive, and suddenly the large man whirled towards the doors that a single police officer had come into, hands held up in surrender. Even Mike could see the bullet-proof vest he had on under his shirt. His captor, upon seeing this lone savior, cocked the gun. Mike had never heard a barrel slide into place before, but he recognized the sound instantly as one that usually preceded death on those TV shows he then swore to never watch again. "You try to stop us and he dies."

Mike must have imagined the strangled moan he heard from across the large atrium. No way would Harvey ever sound like that.

"We're ready to meet any demands if it means getting everyone out of here safely." And even Mike could hear the lies all over his voice. The gunman holding Mike and the gunman holding the young woman exchanged a look. A scared teller pushed a bag of money over the counter, then another one. Mike could feel, couldn't see, the man behind him shrug a bit.

Then a bullet shot at point-blank range tore through Mike's leg.

It was worse than the pain of burns. Worse than any pain Mike had known. He heard the gunshot and fell and thought solemnly _so this is what dying feels like_. He lifted his head and waited for another bang, waited for the poor college girl to be shot too, but all he could see was a flurry of feet and shouts, maybe another shot but by then he'd reached his hand down to feel where the bullet was. His fingers came back dripping blood.

He'd been shot. In a bank robbery. That would be one to tel his grandchildren. He smiled at the thought, smiled a little sarcastically because those who died in bank robberies didn't get to have grandchildren, and passed out before Harvey could get to him.

.***.

Donna sat next in the chair, finally giving up on trying to get Harvey to rest and just nursing the cup of coffee between her long fingers. Harvey hadn't said much since she'd arrived, just barely pushed out some words about Mike being shot and then continuing to walk back and forth in front of the doors that ran to surgery.

"Where was he shot?"

"In the leg. They hit an artery. The blood..." But Harvey closed his mouth again. Shook his head. Continued pacing.

At one point, Donna had left to get coffee. Mike had been in surgery for six hours. When she got back, Harvey had finally collapsed in a chair and was just staring at the doors as if he could will them to open and bring out the good news. "Want to tell me about it?"

Harvey shook his head, accepted the coffee, and then slammed it down on a side table with so much force that the liquid jumped out and would have burned his hand if hospital coffee was anything more than lukewarm. "I swear to God I didn't know this would happen. I thought...you saw him. He was out of it. Looked like Hell. Sick as a dog. I thought I could give the kid a nap time while I finagled with Lawrence. I didn't know..."

"No one could have known." Donna said quickly, but Harvey shook his head again.

"When we got the call...it's Lawrence's bank, he knew as soon as it started. I didn't even have to look to know that Mike was in trouble. He has the worst luck I've ever seen. But when I saw that gun to his head..." He took a sip of coffee to force himself to stop talking. "I couldn't do anything to help him. I had to just...watch."

"He'll be all right." Donna soothed, but she'd seen Harvey when she first walked in, standing in the waiting room looking like an extra from a slasher film. Blood on his arms, his pant legs, his tie, his jacket. Blood everywhere, and all of it coming out of Mike's rather compact body.

It was another four hours before Mike got out of surgery, another eight before they could watch him sleep. Harvey stood in the doorway and stared. "He'll be out of the woods soon." A doctor had promised, suppressing a yawn. "It wouldn't be so bad but the poor guy's got a cold. Wreaking havoc with the drugs we're trying to give him."

Harvey nodded like he understood, then went home and got changed. Jessica already knew he wasn't coming into work, but he didn't think Mike needed to see his own blood all over his boss's clothes.

Twenty-one hours after being shot in a bank robbery (a _bank robbery? _this could not be real life!) Mike opened his eyes to a fearful Donna and a sleeping Harvey. He tried to open his mouth but found that he was too tired, so instead he just flapped his hand a bit uselessly and it landed on one of Harvey's, resting, for some reason, on the side of the bed.

Harvey blinked and was instantly awake. When he looked down and saw that Mike's eyes were open, a look of such tenderness spread over his features that Mike felt his tired lips twitch into a smile. "You're trying your damnedest to die on me, Mike? Cause I'm still not going to let you quit."

"Just seeing how many grey hairs I can give you." Mike yawned, already falling back into the black abyss.

Harvey had so much more to say to him, wanted the associate to talk and laugh and reference old Sci-Fi movies so he was sure, was quite sure that he was okay. But Mike's eyelids were fluttering. He had only a few more seconds to say something important.

"I told you there's more than one response to a gun to the head." Harvey tried joking, already swearing to never use that expression as a teaching method again.

"You're prophetic, Harv." Mike said, using that old family nickname again. Before Harvey could call him out on it, he'd succumbed once again to the allure of drugs, his hand still wrapped around the man who claimed he didn't care.

**.***.**

**okay, we'll admit that these situations are a bit extreme...but they're too fun to stop. hope y'all don't mind the mindless h/c. there's not enough of it on the show.**


	4. The Second Worst Day

_"I just want you to know that I'm going to work hard. And I'm going to make you proud. Not like a son...We don't really look that much alike, I guess. That's a strange thing to say." **Mike to Harvey**_

.***.

It was November, and the chill in the air made Mike ache all over. He wouldn't tell Harvey - could never tell Harvey - but sometimes he swore that the scars on his arms burned like they did that day in the fire when (oh, god, a guy died and mike could've saved him but was too damn weak) the building went up in flames. He knew that his leg hurt - a throbbing pain that was still, months later, stopping him from riding his bike to work. Or at least riding well.

Harvey sighed when Mike walked into his office, obviously in pain and obviously doing everything possible to cover up that fact. "A car, Mike. Really, with what you're being paid it shouldn't put much of a dent in the budget to buy a shitty car." Mike gave him a look that clearly said _drop it _and Harvey pressed just a little bit harder. "It's an injury. There's nothing to be ashamed about. Don't let pride cause you pain."

Mike stared at him for a moment, then pointed at Harvey. "Pot, meet kettle."

Harvey rolled his eyes and dropped, even though he winced in sympathetic pain when Mike stumbled into the glass wall on the way out of the office. This was just not the kid's year, although in that point in November he just thought it had been a bad summer. Three awful months, but it was over. All had been quiet for so many weeks in a row that maybe they got complacent, weren't as vigilant as they could be. Everyone was wrapped up in holidays, in the cold weather, in feverish end-of-the-year catch-up, and so things that they might have been careful about at the end of that long, bad summer when everything seemed to go wrong once were suddenly not so very important.

This was the only explanation anyone could give later, once the two men had been found (Harvey holding Mike's nearly-dead body) twenty-two hours after the pair had gone missing.

.***.

"We're out of gas."

Mike glanced at the dashboard and saw that Harvey was right, as always. They were at empty, and in the middle of nowhere New York, so far upstate it was nearly Canada. "Well, let's get some more."

"Thanks, genius, I didn't know that was the remedy for an empty fuel tank."

Mike bristled, his hand firmly on his knee. It was throbbing, as it had all weekend, because of the cold weather. Sometimes he still felt like the bullet was in there, a lump like cancer waiting to spread. But that was ridiculous. "It's not my fault the contract fell through. If you want to blame anything, blame the weather." He gestured at the storm that was kicking it up a notch outside. The first real snow storm of winter. He glanced at Harvey, suddenly anxious. "Please tell me you're a good driver."

Harvey was about to say something sarcastic, but spared a glance for the kid first. His face softened, though because he was looking forward Mike didn't see the expression. "I'm a good driver. I wouldn't have brought us up these mountains if I wasn't." He shot Mike another look. He was shaking. "Why don't you sleep? By the time you wake up we'll be through the worst of it."

"Someone needs to keep you awake. And remind you about the gas."

Harvey sighed. "I don't even know where the nearest gas station is. In this part of the State it could be twenty miles away."

Mike shrugged and buried himself deeper in his thin jacket, trying to stop the shaking that was just sending bolts of pain through his body, courtesy of his leg. The next stretch of road brought them to a patch of black ice that skidded them into the other lane, where, luckily, there was no traffic.

"Jesus," Harvey muttered, correcting. It was only then that he realized there were fingernails digging into his upper arm. He slowed the car - they were the only ones on the road, not like they were holding anyone up - and grabbed Mike's hand in his. It was cold as ice. "Hey. _Hey_. I know cars aren't your favorite thing. I didn't know the weather would be this bad. I'm sorry."

Mike relaxed, managed a small smile for his boss. "The great Harvey Specter apologizing for something? I need Louis's recorder so I can record that for posterity."

Harvey smirked and turned back to the wheel. "I won't crash, kid," he promised, "When we stop for gas, you can grab the blanket out of the trunk. I'm pretty sure Ray put one in there ages ago."

The prospect of a blanket did brighten Mike up. And maybe the gas station would have a convenience stores (even the middle of nowhere had to have convenience stores, right?) that sold Asprin to take the edge off the pain. He'd brought a bottle of prescription meds with him on this weekend trip to the North, but long hours and cold weather would have depleted the whole thing even if he hadn't knocked it over into the sink while trying to unscrew the cap at two in the morning. What he would give now for one of those little blue capsules...

They drove in silence for a while, both watching the weather warily. Harvey tried, in vain, to get a radio station - to check how bad the storm was supposed to get, or even to break up this cold silence. In the end, he started talking inanely, one eye always on the spot on the dashboard where a hand pointed stubbornly at E.

"You know, Josh never liked cars either." Mike sat up, and Harvey grinned to himself. His younger brother had visited Mike in the hospital when he'd stopped by in New York in September, and ever since the two had been in constant communication - e-mails, texts, a thing about birds cheeping that Harvey would never understand. He knew that Josh had told his associate stories about his big brother. He just wanted to return the favor.

"Our parents were older and didn't drive much. When I was in school, we travelled everywhere by bus - Boston's good that way. It wasn't until he was fifteen, and we were moving down to New York, that he really got in the car for the first time. We drove down in a storm like this and, God, you should have seen him. Like a mother trying to give her son driving lessons. He just kept screaming to _pull over _and _geeze, that was close_." Harvey smiled at the memory of a young Josh clinging to his arm, much the way Mike had. "It probably would have been fine if we hadn't come up to that accident."

Mike was staring at him, wide-eyed, engrossed in the story, and so he didn't see what Harvey did. "Oh look," the older man said, cutting off the anecdote. "A gas station."

"Haarveey!" Mike protested, drawing out his name, "What happened? What accident?"

"How old are you?" Harvey asked, pulling up to the pump that distributed only one kind of gas - and not the kind he liked to fill his Camaro with. He stared at the pump for a second, trying to remember the last time he'd filled up his own car (why had Ray chosen _this_ week to be sick?) He turned to Mike to find the kid already walking away. "Hey! Get back here!"

"I have a bike, Harv." Mike said, raising his eyebrows. "I don't know nothing 'bout gassin' no cars." He disappeared into the small one-roomed building.

Harvey peered through the falling snow and realized that the entire operation must be unmanned. You deposited money or swiped a credit card for your gas, and he would bet that inside there'd be automatic dispensers. Someone smart had made sure that no one would have to trek up to the mountains to man a gas station that was only frequented three or four times a day.

There was a rumble somewhere nearby, almost like thunder, and Harvey looked up at the storm above him. Could you have thunder in a snow storm? But the rumble sounded like it came from somewhere near the top of the mountain, which stood so far above them it was lost in the swirling clouds. Harvey felt an ominous prickling of his skin - his Spidey senses were tingling - and shook out the last drops of gas before going into the small one-room establishment.

"Mike?" His eyes adjusted to the gloom and he saw the younger man shivering in front of a machine that was spurting out coffee at irregular intervals. "Aw, come on, you have no idea how old that is."

"It's hot," Mike defended, lifting the cup to his lips. He grimaced. "Okay...it's _almost_ warm."

Harvey rolled his eyes and reached into his wallet where he kept the quarters he normally used to buy a hotdog from the stand in front of Pearson Hardman. A Hershey's Bar sounded like it would keep him awake until they drove through the worst of the storm.

There was another rumble and Mike, stirring his coffee, glanced up. "What was -?"

The sound: like being in a jet engine. The raw, ripping sound of the earth heaving itself apart. Suddenly the cold didn't matter. Nothing mattered except getting in the car and getting out of here before the landslide that had just split the mountain in two got to them.

Mike dropped his coffee in his panic and raced forward - and fell, five feet from the entrance. Harvey was already at the car, yanking on the door, glancing at the snow that was racing down the mountain, an unstoppable army. Mike groaned and twisted, trying to get to his feet, but in his panic he'd twisted his leg the wrong way and the agony overwhelmed him. "Harvey!" He cried, his voice whipped away in the wind. He scrambled with his hands, half-crawling too slowly to the open door. "HARVEY!"

The snow was here, ripping down trees tumbling across the land, and Harvey, who'd already turned the car on, was about to peel out of there with seconds to spare, finally realized that Mike was not next to him. He looked over his shoulder and saw the younger man collapsed in the doorway, pure terror written across his face.

It was a decision that was really no decision at all. Flee to safety or save Mike.

He ran back to the one-room convenience store, slipping in the snow, the ice, and got to Mike just as the landslide collapsed the building all around them.

FOUR HOURS LATER

"Mike? Oh, thank God. Mike, can you hear me?"

"Ngh." Mike said articulately, opening his eyes to see...whiteness. He tried to move, to struggle against the absence of everything, and then he realized everything _hurt_. Everything hurt, and he was stuck.

"Don't move! Don't move! It's okay, though. You'll be okay."

"H-Harvey?" His teeth were chattering so much it was making his head hurt, and Mike wondered which was worse, the cold or the pain. The pain was like something clawing at him from the inside, terrifying in its meaning that his body had been injured. The cold was different, muted, ninja-like rather than overtly lethal, but blistering his skin and face. "Wh-wh-what h-h-hap-happened?" He clamped his mouth shut. The stuttering was frustrating.

"Landslide. It took out _everything_. You were hurt by one of the machines." Mike's muddled brain managed to remember that they'd gone upstate for the weekend, that they were driving in a storm and had stopped for gas, that they were surrounded by huge machines. "You - it took me a while to stop the bleeding. I packed it with snow. You were out for hours." Mike turned, blinked away snow to see Harvey's face because he couldn't be, as his voice sounded, close to tears.

"Y-you okay?" Mike was glad for the better control over his tongue. And he felt something squeeze his waist. Harvey's arms. He must he on Harvey's lap, with the other man holding him.

"I'm fine, Mike. No bumps or bruises here." Harvey was even wearing a thicker suit than Mike, and though that didn't keep him anywhere near _warm_ at least he wasn't in danger of freezing to death. Yet. He hugged the younger man closer, thinking about sharing body heat and other gay things he and his college buddies would laugh at.

Mike's eyes slipped again. The blackness, so different from the white world of winter and pain, was warm and inviting, was calling him.

"No - don't fall asleep! Mike! Mike!"

But he was already out.

NINE HOURS LATER

"Where could they be?" Donna had come in on Sunday evening to get some files in order and was now regretting it. The storm, which had been promised to pass over them with just a few flurries, had hit full-force. Further proof that weathermen were not to be trusted. She looked up at Jessica Pearson and tried not to betray her own worry.

"The storm's coming from upstate. They probably holed up in a hotel for the night."

"They would have called." Jessica said, "This is a big merger we're working on." But Donna knew it wasn't the delayed paperwork and information Jessica was worried about.

"Downed power lines. Winter weather knocks out all sorts of communication. We're lucky the city hasn't lost power yet." Donna offered a smile she didn't feel. "I'm sure they're safe."

ELEVEN HOURS LATER

"Why does Josh hate cars?"

"What?" They were past cold now, past shivering and shaking, past teeth chattering. They were past talking about being cold and talking about rescue. They were just...waiting. Waiting in a cold, dark limbo as Mike bled died on the inside. They were both trying to ignore that fact. There was nothing either of them could do.

"Before we found the gas station. You were telling me that Josh hated cars."

"Oh." Harvey felt a pang in his chest at the mention of his little brother, and for an instant could picture Joshua in his bright studio, hearing that his older brother had died in a _freaking avalanche. _He shoved the projection aside. "Right. We were driving from Boston to New York, all our worldly possessions in a trailer behind us, and I was going really slow because I hadn't driven almost ever. Didn't want to die on the way to a new town. Anyway, Josh kept grabbing my arm for the smallest things and I was getting annoyed and I turned to him to tell him to cut it out. We were at a four-way-intersection in the middle of nowhere. I turned, so I didn't see the actual car crash, but he did. I could see it in his eyes."

Mike's eyes were looking at him now, impossibly blue in his pale, pale face. Harvey brushed some of the younger man's hair away absently. The hair was laced with tiny icicles. They were going to die soon. "Anyway, if I hadn't slowed down to tell him to cut it out, we would have been in that intersection. As it was, we watched five people's lives change. One of them died." Harvey sighed, "Josh was nineteen."

Round as saucers, blue eyes stared up at him, and Harvey shifted so he could draw Mike nearer to his non-existent body heat, the younger man's head lying right up against his heart. "Wow. That..." Mike didn't finish his sentence, just shook his head. A movement Harvey could feel against his heart.

They were quiet, and quiet in the snow is different than quieter anywhere else. It's not just the absence of sound - it's the stifling of it. Like being smothered with a pillow.

"My parents were in a car accident," Mike said, and Harvey could feel the words vibrate through his body.

"I know."

"I told my dad I hated him," Mike buried himself deeper into Harvey, as if he was trying to crawl in. "I was eleven. It was the first time I'd ever told him that. And then he left, and I never got to say I was sorry. Cars took that away from me. It's why I ride my bike."

"Humans took your father away from you," Harvey said, quietly, "A very drunk human. But you can blame it on cars if you want. If we get out of this, it'll take a lot for me to get in a car again."

"Or near mountains."

"And I'm investing in thermal underwear."

"Really?" Mike asked, lifting his head a little so he could look up at Harvey.

"No, not really. But I'll think about doing it."

SEVENTEEN HOURS LATER

"Okay, no hotel on any fathomable route from Ithaca to New York checked in a Harvey Specter or a Mike Ross last night," Donna said, hanging up the phone and staring at Jessica. It was a workday morning now, but you wouldn't know that from the office. So many of the roads in New York were closed from the five inches dumped on the city that it was a semi-official holiday. Even the subway had been discontinued until further notice.

"And where was the avalanche?"

Donna pointed to a place very near to the main highway on the map she had in front of her. "It took out a gas station. I called the manager and he said it was unmanned, that very few people ever went there. But there's a chance..."

"I'll take that chance." Jessica said, already dialling. "Mike Ross has been having an unlucky year. Whatever ridiculously odds there were against them being in that gas station were tipped by him being there." She shook her head and spoke rapidly into the phone until she got to the people she needed to find, calling in all her chips so a search and rescue team would abandon their sweep of a nearby village to go to a little gas station that may or may not have any people in it.

"Watch them be at Harvey's place, catching up on sleep." Jessica said, "It would be just like Harvey to make us go through all this trouble."

Donna smiled, though she didn't think it was funny. She wished with all her heart that the two men she'd come to care about were buried in blankets in Harvey's apartment, sleeping through alarms in lieu of taking a sick day, disconnecting their phones, and making hot chocolate to go with their _Firefly_ marathon.

God, she hoped that's what was happening.

TWENTY HOURS LATER

"Mike, you need to stay awake."

"Please, Harvey. I'm so tired." Mike was crying, and the tears froze on his cheeks, and Harvey felt like each one was stabbing him in the heart.

"Hey! No sleeping on the job!"

"I hate you, Harvey." Mike said, his eyes open and angry, meaning the words. At that moment, he really hated Harvey Specter for keeping him from the allure of nothingness. Then his head lolled to the side.

"Mike? MIKE! Wake up! Wake up!"

Harvey had already taken off his jacket, Mike's jacket, had already wrapped them both in both layers and was hugging as much of Mike as he could against his bare chest. At first, his associate had felt like an icicle, unthawable, meltable. Then, just as he thought they were finally starting to get somewhere near warm, Mike's heart, which had been beating sluggishly in time with his own...stopped.

"Mike! Mike!"

TWENTY-TWO HOURS LATER

"Sir, please let go. He's in good hands. You need to get looked at yourself."

"No, Mike." Harvey hung on tighter. Death wasn't taking Mike. He was going to fight for this.

"Sir, we'll take care of him. You need to let go now."

Harvey didn't know that, after all this time, they'd be able to pry his frozen arms off so easily. He thought he and Mike had been fused together. He didn't know that, after all this time, he could muster up the energy to stand, to look at the damage done to his associate. The sight made him fall back to the ground.

"Is he alive?" The words were a whisper. After all this time, Harvey was incredibly tired. And so, so cold. No one answered him. He cleared his throat, and the cold that was like a punch int he gut, like a ridiculous anti-fire, spread through him again. "Is he alive?" More than a whisper this time. More demanding, too.

A man younger than his kid brother crouched in front of him. "He's alive. I gotta tell you man - you are two lucky guys."

Harvey smiled, not thinking that was funny at all. Luck would have been being anywhere but in the path of the avalanche. Luck would have been getting away safely. Luck would have been Harvey hurt, not Mike.

FOUR DAYS LATER

Harvey put his feet up on Mike's bed, wrapping the blanket more securely around his torso. The only time he felt truly warm was in scalding showers. As it was, his hands were so heavily bandaged because of the frost bite that arranging the cover was as hard as competing in an Olympic event. His toes were frost bitten, too, and his ears were permanently damaged. Mike had almost lost three fingers, but Harvey had fought for them to remain in hopes that he would regain function in them.

Mike had woken up a few times before, never lucid. He was sick, as Harvey was, with the kind of debilitating illness that strikes only those who have been too cold for too long. Harvey should be in bed convalescing, too, but Harvey was a horrible patient and was even worse when forcibly separated from Mike, so he told a young nurse they were lovers and they'd fallen all over themselves to get them a room together. Thank God for good people.

Eyes opened to meet Harvey's, and the worst of the fever was gone from the blue depths. "Ugh." Mike said, and Harvey was on his feet.

"Hey, kid. You trying to scare me to death?"

Mike tried to move his mouth, but his lips had been frost-bitten too. They were clumsy things that formed words with difficulty. "I'm sorry," he managed after a struggle, and Harvey shook his head vehemently.

"Nothing to be sorry for. Can't blame you for an avalanche, although I'm starting to think I can't take you anywhere. You're bad luck, kid."

Mike blinked away tears that came and didn't dry on his face. "My _stupid_ leg. I fell. You could have gotten out."

"And leave you behind? What would Donna say?" The Tin Man was still trying to cover up his hidden heart.

Mike peered at him from behind lashes thick with tears. "I told you I hate you."

Harvey shrugged. "Not the first time someone said that to me. I have thick skin. I'll get over it."

The blackness was pulling Mike under again, but this time it wasn't promising death and escape, just a drug-haze to take away the worst of the pain. Still, he managed a few more moments. "I don't hate you. I wanted to...like my dad..." He was gone, back under the darkness.

And Harvey was left staring at a young man who'd just compared him to his father.

**.***.**

**one more. one more worst day. they're getting bad now, you see. hope you guys continue to enjoy these little stories - we enjoy your reviews. **


	5. The Worst Day

_**Mike:** I thought you were against emotions._  
_**Harvey:** I'm against having emotions, not using them._

.***.

By the next year, they thought it was over. The streak of bad luck had to finally be at an end. For Christmas, Harvey gave Mike a four-leaf clover. And a lucky rabbit's foot. And a horseshoe, a wishbone, and holy water.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Mike asked, looking at the holy water. "Kill demons?" But he tucked the clover into his pocket and kept it there.

New Years passed. The scars on Mike's arms faded from a dull red to pink, and though his skin was still pale and stretched it was no longer so obvious that he'd barely escaped being killed in a fire. He still couldn't really use three fingers on his left hand, not after being frost-bitten, but he could bend them enough to get a grip on things, even though it sometimes felt like trying to move a limb that had fallen asleep.

Mike always carried the rabbit's foot around with him and would rub it, reminding himself that Harvey Specter had given it to him. Harvey didn't do much with Mike any more. Oh, he was still a good mentor, and a colleague at work, but for a while Mike had thought they were more. Friends. Almost, even...brothers. But while Harvey would still joke with him, still talk to him about cases, they never got further than just...a work relationship. And Mike thought he understood that. He thought it was because he was deformed and ugly, because he was broken, and though he'd once thought of Harvey as an annoying older brother, he got used to the new relationship. Reluctantly.

Of course, Harvey didn't think any such thing about Mike. Sometimes they'd be in court or talking in Harvey's office and Mike would tug down his sleeves, as was his habit now, and Harvey would feel a pang in his chest at the look of embarrassment that crossed Mike's face any time someone looked at his arms. Because none of it was the kid's fault. Everything, everything, was on Harvey. And the Tin Man liked to pretend he didn't have a heart, that he couldn't be touched, but every time Mike had ended up in the hospital, Harvey would sit there and think that the world might just end if the younger man died. And that was a scary, scary thought.

So after the avalanche, he tried to distance himself from Mike. Because he thought it would be easier. Because he couldn't _care_ so much after watching the kid be hurt time after time. And some part of him knew it was wrong, and some part of him saw the hurt look that crossed Mike's face every time Harvey dismissed, him, but a larger, stubborn part said that this would be easier for everyone. In the end.

In the end, it took a stalker and a couple of kidnappings for Harvey to admit what he'd been trying to ignore since that car accident all those months ago: that he felt the same way about Mike as he did about his own little brother, and he couldn't bare to lose him.

.***.

It started with two pictures delivered in a manilla envelope with no return address, just HARVEY SPECTER scrawled on the front in black Sharpie. Donna put it on his desk in the morning with the rest of the mail, and Harvey opened it automatically when it rose to the top.

The first picture was of Mike standing in front of the door to his crappy apartment, strapping his helmet on. He looked like he was thinking about something - more importantly, he looked like he had no idea that the picture was being taken.

The second picture was of Josh in his studio in Queens. His desk faced the small window and you could see him bent over a page, hand moving across it like it had never been broken.

Harvey stared at these incredulously for a moment, then happened to flip one over.

MR. SPECTER,

YOU TOOK MY BROTHER AND BEST FRIEND AWAY. AN EYE FOR AN EYE.

Unbidden, a bubble of panic rose in Harvey. He upended the envelope and found another, smaller envelope inside. He ripped it open and found a third picture. This one had both Mike and Josh in it, tied up in what looked like a garage. They were blindfolded. They'd been beaten.

"Donna!" Harvey was surprised he could speak. He was stumbling to his feet, rushing out the door. "Donna, is Mike in today?"

"You're the one who told him he didn't have to come in until noon. A reward for staying awake for thirty hours this weekend, remember?" Donna looked up and her hands stilled on her keyboard. "Oh my God, what's wrong _now?"_

Wordlessly, Harvey showed her the picture. The important one. She stared at it for a second, then picked up the phone. After thirty seconds, she glanced back at Harvey. "Josh isn't answering."

Harvey leaned against the desk, putting his weight on it or else he would have fallen over. He was a closer. Game plans came quickly to him, in the heat of the moment in court. But he had no game plan for this - for the picture that was staring him down from Donna's desk. "Call 9-1-1." He said, "We need the professionals on this. Tell them that two men had been -" he stumbled over the word. It was ludicrous. It was something that happened in fiction "kidnapped. And tell them I know who did it."

"Do you?" Donna asked, phone already to her ear.

Harvey was already walking away, going to tell Jessica that he needed some time away from the office. "Yes. They left a note."

.***.

"Mike! Mike! How you doing, man?"

Mike opened his eyes and managed to turn his head in Josh's direction. He really hoped the other man had a blindfold, too. No need for him to see the marks they left on his body. "I'm more worried about you. I heard a whip..."

"It was just a belt," Josh said quickly, "Nothing I can't handle. Mike, man, what are you doing?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," The associate lied, fidgeting with his bound hands. On TV the hero could always get out of situations like these, no problem.

"You keep antagonizing them," Josh sounded truly pissed, though Mike knew most of that anger wasn't actually at him, "What the Hell man? I can handle myself. Don't be a fucking martyr."

"What would Harvey say about that language?" Mike tisked, breathing hard, hoping Josh couldn't hear the pain in his voice.

They both were silent for a moment, then Josh asked, quietly, "Do you know who these people are? Do you know what they want?"

Mike sighed. Blood pooled in his lap when he did that. They'd taken a belt to Josh, and the sound had made Mike scream, curse, rock in the chair he was bound in. That's when he was cut, a long, shallow line that went down his torso, with a matching one on the other side. X marks the spot. "Yeah, I can take a guess." Eidetic memory meant never forgetting a voice either, and one of them had been uncomfortably familiar. "Larry Kelly. Used to manage Plot Hole, this big book distributing company. They weren't big on following copyright laws. And a bunch of other laws. Harvey was the lead on that case. He put away Larry's brother Matt and his best friend...Ben Martin..." He stopped here, trying to breathe through the pain that came in waves from _everywhere_. "Couldn't get Larry though. But the company collapsed after the others went to jail, so we didn't think anything of it."

"This is all about a couple of people in jail?" Josh asked, angry, "Isn't this revenge overkill?"

Even though Josh couldn't see him, Mike turned his face away. He knew exactly why Kelly went to such lengths. "Matt Kelly was killed in prison two months into his five-year sentence. Ben Martin was killed two days after."

Josh made a noise like he'd been the one to be stabbed, and Mike could only say, "Yeah," in return.

.***.

Another set of pictures came two hours after the first set. By that time, the Pearson Hardman office had come to a standstill and was crawling with police...or FBI. Harvey wasn't paying that much attention to what it said on the uniforms, not after he looked at the other packet. "Who delivered this?" He roared, voice loud over the din of disgruntled lawyers and solemn police/FBI. Everyone turned to him and he waved the manilla envelope in the air. "Who delivered this?"

"Uh, I think he did." Harold pointed at a guy leaving the office, dropping off more mail on the way.

Harvey had him pinned to the wall in a second. Two police/FBI guys ran and pried his fingers off him. Jessica was there, too, and her slim hand did more than the burly officers ever could. "Who gave this to you?" Harvey snarled, waving the envelope in the guy's face. He couldn't have been more than twenty years old.

The kid gulped, looking around at the many, many people staring at him. "Some guy. Downstairs. I thought it was just...regular mail. He said to give it to you, make sure I personally put it in your hands. He gave me twenty bucks."

One of the officers took the kid over to a sketch artists, which Harvey didn't understand at all. He knew that Larry Kelly had done all this. The only question was where Larry _was_. _  
_

Donna was at his elbow, Jessica was still on the other side, even Louis was peering over his shoulder and Rachel had come up, looking scared. "Open it, Harvey," Donna said, quietly, "There might be something important."

Harvey didn't want to open it. He didn't want to see more pictures of his brothers - no, sorry, more pictures of his brother and Mike - beaten and bloody. But he did open the envelope, and he did force himself to look inside, and he heard Donna gasp and Rachel turned away and even Louis backed off, looking sick. Harvey just stared at the pictures. One was a close-up of Josh's back, which had been so criss-crossed with scars that it looked like mines had exploded. The other was Mike's front (and, god, there were the burns, the ones from months ago, and the frostbitten fingers, and...mike...) bleeding, bleeding from two huge cuts in his chest.

"He's torturing them." Harvey said, his voice sounding strange to his own ears. He threw the pictures at the nearest officer, breathing hard. "He's fucking torturing them. You better be figuring out where he is."

Even as the words were coming out of his mouth a baby police officer/FBI agent came running up. "Sir," He said, addressing the man Harvey had thrown the pictures at, "We got him." He looked over at Harvey and smiled, "We got the guy who delivered the pictures."

.***.

"How's the hand, Josh. Josh? You still with me? Stay awake, man. I am not going to be the one to tell Harvey you died."

"The hand's fine. Almost good as new." Josh's voice was strained, pained, and Mike felt responsible. His plan to keep everyone off of Harvey's little brother's back wasn't going as well as he'd hoped, and though he'd given as much lip as he could, they'd still stood Josh up, punched him, kicked him, and made Mike watch. Now the other man was on the floor, unable to move. They didn't even bother to tie him up after they broke his ankle. "Glad these guys didn't touch my hand."

"Yeah. There's your silver lining." Mike laughed, then cut off abruptly as Kelly walked into the room. The big man kicked Josh in the face and turned to Mike, who was spitting like a wildcat, madly trying to get out of the bonds that secured him to the chair.

Kelly looked between the two of them, then said, slowly. "Harvey's here."

Josh sat up and spit out a tooth. His nose was running blood down into his mouth, which made his smile gruesome. "My brother the super hero has come to rescue to us, Mike."

Determined to sound as cool as Josh, Mike nodded, "Don't let him hear you say that. He already thinks he's Batman."

Kelly talked over both of them. "I set up something for him. An opportunity I never had. Proctor!" A man, presumably, Proctor, came in with a camera, television, wires. Even Mike could tell it was a web feed. "Harvey is upstairs. You get to see him, he gets to see you." He turned to Proctor. "Let the games begin."

"May the odds be ever in your favor." Josh muttered from the floor, trying to stem the blood flowing from his nose. Mike laughed at that, a little hysterically.

The screen came to life, and it did show Harvey surrounded by about twenty police (or were they FBI agents?) Harvey was arguing with someone, then suddenly turned and looked at the screen. Presumably, he was seeing a video of Mike and Josh.

"I'm going to give you an opportunity, Specter." Kelly said, one of his hands laying on Mike's shoulder. The touch felt predatory, made Mike break out in goosebumps. "One I never got to have. I lost my brother and best friend because of you. But I'm not a bad man. You can chose one, and I'll send them to you." Kelly moved in front of Mike, shrugged delicately. "Of course, the other man will be killed."

Mike's stomach dropped and he looked at Harvey's face, screwed up in anger and _pain._

"And now you have to chose between -"

"Joshua," Harvey said, cutting Kelly off and breaking Mike's heart. "I choose Josh."

Kelly smiled, "As you wish." And in that instant Mike remembered that Harvey was Batman, and Batman had once had to make a choice like this, and he remembered that Kelly was deranged, crazy - had to be to actually kidnap people. Who kidnaps people in real life? And Mike made a split-second decision that he hoped was the right one and threw himself in front of Josh the instant before the gun went off and the bullet that would have hit the younger Specter's head went into Mike instead.

And that's how Mike got shot twice in a year.

.***.

"Mike? Mike!" Strong arms were holding him, like they'd held him through the avalanche and the horrible cold hours afterward, and Mike knew he was dead because Harvey wasn't in the room with Josh and him, Harvey was somewhere else and watching through a television.

"God, Mike, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." The arms tightened and Mike wanted to open his eyes because this was a frickin Hallmark moment, Harvey Specter apologizing, but he couldn't because his body wasn't responding right. Like his stupid frostbitten fingers, he felt numb all over. Numb, and so, so tired.

Someone was yelling, a voice in a similar timbre to Harvey's but slightly higher, unique to itself. "What the Hell, Harvey? What the Hell?"

"What would you have done, Josh?" Harvey snapped, and the arms loosened for a second and Mike groaned so quietly no one heard him. "Are you telling me you didn't want me to pick you?"

"I'm not the one who's going to have to explain it to him," Josh said, and Mike groaned again, and everyone heard it this time, and the arms tightened more so that Mike was against Harvey's chest now and listening to his heart beat.

"Thank God, kid." Harvey squeezed tighter and Mike wanted to tell him to stop, please, he hurt all over, but he didn't have the heart and in the end, when the blackness came, he was just glad he had someone there with him at the end.

.***.

The ending was not nearly so dramatic after that. Kelly had killed himself just before the FBI agents (not police officers) kicked down the door to the basement he was in, so there was no one to blame but the grunts that did the dirty work. They were sentenced to two years in the same prison Kelly's brother and friend had been killed in.

Everyone else tried to pick up the pieces, but anyone who ever broke a vase or mirror will tell you that even if you collect all the fragments they still don't fit together quite right. Josh was in the hospital for three days. He didn't talk to his brother for two of them. Mostly it was because he'd been scared in that basement, mostly it was because he didn't know that being a lawyer could make you enemies like that. Mostly.

Mike was in the hospital, again, because he'd been shot in the shoulder, because he had a big X marks the spot on his stomach. He stared at the ceiling and wondered if the hospital had some sort of frequent fliers discount.

"Hey, kid." Harvey sat in the chair next to Mike, holding a cup of coffee that Mike was absolutely not supposed to take a sip of. Harvey gave him a sip anyway. "How you feeling today?"

It had been five days since the basement, and Mike shrugged. For the past five days he'd acted like Harvey's choice hadn't bothered him. After all, if he had any flesh and blood left in the world, he probably would have made the same one. But the fact is Harvey was the most important person in Mike's life, and it sucks to know that the feeling wasn't mutual, no matter how much he understood the decision.

Harvey seemed to understand his mood, because he put the coffee down for a second and looked at Mike. Really looked at him. "It's been a hell of a year, kid. Do you realize you've ended up in the hospital five times?"

"I did realize, actually. I wish they'd take out a restraining order against me." But Mike's voice wasn't quite right, wasn't quite joking, jovial.

So Harvey said what he'd been meaning to say but hadn't quite had the guts to get out. "I don't know what to do here, Mike. I want to thank you for saving my kid brother's life, but every time I get started it sounds wrong." Harvey scrubbed a hand over his face and looked over at the bedside table. All of the things had been on Mike in the basement were there. The lucky rabbit's foot was on top. Not so lucky. "Because every time I want to say it I don't know which kid brother I'm talking about. I - damnit, Mike, I know I've been an ass recently. I know that. But you have to know...you should know that...you're my little brother. You annoy me to Hell and..." Harvey pinched the bridge of his nose, took a deep breath. "When I saw you on that screen...it was like my world was ending. I know I picked Josh, and I'm sorry. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do."

Mike nodded, accepting. "It's all right. I understand." He sounded tired, but not the physical tired he had been for the past few days. Being shot and stabbed does things to you.

"I don't think you do." Harvey shook his head. "You're my brother, Mike. I couldn't bear to lose you." He laughed a little and squeezed Mike's hand. "You get put in the hospital one more time and I'll have to fire you."

"Love you too, Harv." Mike smiled and Harvey did too, his first true smile in days.

"Turns out the Tin Man had a heart all along." Harvey said, shrugging. "Who'd've thunk?"

They still weren't exactly right. They still had to deal with Mike's self-esteem, his issues with the way he looked (now with more scars added to list.) They still had to deal with the fallout from Harvey's answer to the man in the basement, and the fact he chose Josh, the fact that Mike saved Josh's life. They'd still deal with nightmares and anxiety, with fear of failure and and just plain fear. But after that last day, the worst day, Harvey never tried to distance himself from Mike again. Because whether you like it or not, family is forever.

**.***.**

**the end**

**hope everyone enjoyed the season finale. this show is too good to only air in the summer, but we'll have to make up for it in fanfiction. drop us a line with your thoughts on this last chapter (it has to be last because what other extreme situations could they get in to?) thanks for the reviews that kept this going, guys. peace.**


End file.
